Life in the Fast Lane: Exits
by Meriem Clayton
Summary: Sequel to Life in the Fast Lane: Convoy When the Stargate went public, the fame nearly destroyed Sam, Jack, and Daniel. Now reunited, they and their children face a new challenge.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimers/Notes:

One of the worst parts of being famous in today's world is the constant scrutiny of every detail of your private life by the world at large. This is a major theme of this series of stories. I applaud the responsible reporters who are motivated by a desire to give the public the information it needs to make informed decisions and who avoid intrusive reporting on private lives. I do not intend to include ethical journalists in my portrayal of the damage done by the bottom feeding segment of the media that is less concerned about truth or impact on the subjects of stories than in how many readers/viewers a story will attract. 

This story was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt has been made to copyright any characters which may not have been originally created by the author, and no profit is made from this work of fiction. Any original characters and the stories themselves are the property of the author.

I appreciate all feedback, laudatory or critical, greatly but receive some from people who do not have e-mail addresses to which to respond. Please accept my thanks here if I am not able to e-mail it to you.

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Samantha Carter looked ruefully at Jack O'Neill. "I'm afraid that was exactly the way I remembered it. I was sort of hoping that I had exaggerated how demeaning interviews could be in my memory over the last five years since I stopped giving them." She leaned back in the seat, her exhaustion more emotional than physical. The car was moving in fits and starts in heavy Manhattan traffic. Occasionally a passerby would glance over and see the pretty, 40ish appearing blond woman and her distinguished, silver haired companion, still extremely handsome and seeming to be in his late 50s. A few recognized one or the other or both of them but this was Manhattan. Only two tourists from Biloxi even bothered to comment to anyone about it. Since strangers saw only their bodies and not their minds, not even the closer scrutiny of the couple from Mississippi could divine just how tired they both were. It was as if the much envied Gate Effect, stemming from repeated trips through the Stargate's cold, altered reality, had accelerated the aging of their spirits at the same time it dramatically slowed their physical aging.

Jack shook his head. "They picked someone to interview us who doesn't have any interest in the issues. He just wanted the opportunity to get at us so he could slide in personal questions. 'Where's your husband? Where's your wife? How do they feel about the two of you spending time together?' We got to get back to the people setting things up and lay some better ground rules."

"I think they want us on those sorts of shows because they figure that the people who watch the lighter weight stuff are going to be the hardest to reach, the least likely to pay attention to what we say in a speech somewhere," She responded, sounding resigned to more such appearances if they were going to do their bit to fight a policy change toward taking what Earth needed by force from the people of low tech planets.

Jack punched the seat as hard as he could. "If I thought there was any chance Sara would hear or understand any of that idiot's innuendos…" He broke off and stared out the window, thinking about his sweet wife, ravaged by Parkinson's and other physical problems -- he was beginning to fear Alzheimer's although the doctors had yet to mention it -- who was no longer able to really take in all that went on in the world.

Sam said, soothingly, "We're each making appearances alone. As soon as Daniel and I do a couple of interviews together or the two of your make a joint appearance, that'll defuse rumors about you and me."

Jack snorted. "You think so? What about sly suggestions about you and Daniel rekindling old fires? Actually I think we'll start hearing about how all three of us have some sort of strange thing in play." He looked away from the window then and made direct eye contact with her. "Could you handle that?"

"What!" she gasped.

Jack realized how she had heard him immediately. "I DON'T mean if you could handle us actually doing, you know. Where is your head anyway, Sam? I meant, handling the gossip?"

"I knew that," Sam replied, wondering, indeed where her head had been to have even thought for a minute he would be asking a question like that. She had no intention of being unfaithful to Teal'c no matter where her husband was at the moment, Jack was a married man, and Daniel still seemed to be grieving for his late wife. Yet seeing Jack and Daniel in the flesh after years and years was causing her to have stray images flash into her mind, memories of two bodies she had known as well her own during her marriages to each of them. It was embarrassing. She thanked God that people really couldn't read each others' minds but she needed to be more careful about the inappropriate paths in which she allowed such memories to lead her thoughts. "I've heard worse. I can handle it. You're just anxious to get back to Sara. It must have been hard to leave her with Daniel and his kids."

"Not really. Those kids are so good for her. What surprises me is that the Golden Brothers came back to Minnesota again," he said, looking speculative as he considered the return of Sam's three sons to his isolated home -- their son, Johnny O'Neill, Sam and Daniel's son, Jake Jackson, and Sam's boy by her third-ex, Jonas Smith. By contrast, Daniel, his stepdaughter and her baby and his four children had been staying at Jack's ever since Daniel had brought them to earth from Lisseth.

"I've been trying to figure that out and I think it's Jake. I'm hoping, really hoping, that he's softening a little toward his father, not to mention the fact that Daniel's children are his half brothers and sisters. Jake wants to know them before they go back to Lisseth and he never sees them again. It also allows him to be around Daniel without admitting that he wants to be. Johnny's there because he's still defensive about Jake with respect to Daniel. Jonas really took a liking to all the Jacksons when we were together a few weeks ago. And, you know Jack; maybe the same is true for Johnny as for Jake. Maybe Johnny is starting to appreciate his father, you. He'd have even more trouble than Jake admitting he cared." Sam said, glad for the change in topic.

"Sam, Sam, Sam," Jack said, "Wake up and smell the pheromones. What you say may all be true but there's another major draw for Jake. Seline is Jake's stepsister, not a blood relation. I think he's really intrigued with her and taken with her baby. You know he went with Seline and Daniel when Danny's club foot was operated on. They've videoconned on the computer daily, probably more than once, but I know about at least one a day."

"Really?" Sam said surprised. "Where have I been?"

"You've done a lot more appearances than either Daniel or I and you've been worried about Teal'c."

She looked very somber and nodded her head. "Sometimes I can't think about anything else and other times I absolutely refuse to think about it at all because the thoughts aren't good. Imagine if Sara was halfway across the universe and you only got information about her, oh maybe, once a week." She hugged herself as if suddenly cold. "Something tells me Teal'c's only coming back as ashes." Jack gave her the sad, somehow knowing, look that she had caught him out with more than once. Sam kept feeling like he knew something she didn't but he wouldn't admit to a thing.

As they pulled up to the terminal at LaGuardia, Sam's cell rang. She fumbled with answering it while getting out of the car and making her way inside. Jack insisted on taking her carry-on to make it easier. It was a short conversation and she turned to Jack afterwards, very pale. "The Air Force is sending a car to pick us up. They say they'll provide transportation to Minneapolis and not to worry about our plane. They need to meet with me about something."

The government car, a minivan with tinted windows, was at the curb in less than two minutes. Clearly it had been lurking in the vicinity. Sam froze part way into the vehicle when she saw who was seated there, awaiting her. Jack urged her in the rest of the way and the door slid closed. "Hello SamanthaseTeal'c, GeneralO'Neill," he said, gravely.

"Rylac, it's been way too long," Jack said, filling the gap while Sam found her voice.

Neither of them had an illusions about why arguably the most powerful of all Jaffa leaders would have chosen to drop by New York for a visit. "It is good to see you," Sam managed to get out at last. "Do you…do you have news of Teal'c?"

The darkly handsome face in front of her looked so incredibly sad that his words were unnecessary, but he spoke them anyway. Some things have to be spoken out loud, even when they hurt deeply. Ryalc had little English but he would have chosen to speak in Jaffa, in any case, since Sam and Jack were the only ones who needed to understand. "My father and your husband fell in battle three of your planetary cycles ago. He died immediately but he took many of the enemy with him and he saved many of us. It is a measure of the man he was that he chose to die with heroic good effect than to wait for death to strike him down far from battle."

Sam had taken the seat next to Rylac and now she embraced him, beginning to cry but no yet to sob. "Thank you for coming to tell me yourself. I am greatly honored."

"As you know, when my father's second wife died, he left our people because the circumstances of her death played to some of our worst superstitions. Many believed that he was cursed. He knew that it was having a negative effect on my ability to lead. Because he believed in me, he exiled himself. I let him make this sacrifice but, at first, it was a cause of great pain. Then, because of you, I was able to be at peace. You made him happy and kept him from being alone and purposeless in a strange place. " He picked up a stoppered, dark glass bottle, about 6 inches high, from the floor at his feet and handed it to her. "Half of my father's ashes are within."

Sam took the bottle and held on to it for dear life. 

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Johnny O'Neill had been playing guitar on automatic pilot, his gaze fixed across the room on Seline and Jake whose heads were close together, bending over baby Danny. "Teach me how to play," Chiona wheedled, sitting down next to Johnny and interrupting his music by putting a hand on the frets below his grip. He removed it, rather like a piece of seaweed that had washed up against him. Johnny noticed how she jerked her hand away as soon as he touched her. She angled herself around so she was interposed in his line of sight. "Why not?" she asked, challengingly.

He considered Daniel's oldest, Chiona. The signals were so mixed. She hung around him all the time but didn't act like she was all that interested. He was pretty sure she was trying to keep him from horning in on Jake and her step-sister, Seline. He WAS going to have to do something about that situation soon. Seline was becoming too important to Jake no matter how much he tried to point out her shortcomings to his brother. How would Jake handle it when she inevitably went back to Lisseth where Jake couldn't follow? The sooner the budding whatever it was ended, the better.

Then there was how jumpy Chiona had gotten. The last time the two families had been together she had seemed very comfortable with him, taking his arm without a thought. Now she started like a rabbit at any chance contact. He thought back to Seline's reaction when his half-brother, Jake, had hugged her at the time of their introduction. Chiona's reaction now was like Seline's had been. Daniel had said Seline shied away because on Lisseth absolutely no physical contact was allowed between unmarried women and marriageable men. Had he all of a sudden become marriageable? Why not before?"

Chiona repeated her question, "Why not?"

"I don't like to waste my time. I doubt very much if you have enough musical ability to take advantage of it," he answered, deliberately being insulting and hoping she would go away.

She chuckled slightly, not the response he was used to getting from people he shot down. Then she began to sing in a warm, rich, slightly husky alto. The song was in a minor key but seemed to use an 8 tone scale similar to Occidental music. Her brothers and sisters each began to sing along from where they were seated with complete unselfconsciousness. Pubescent Jak's voice occasionally cracked but the close harmony they sang on the chorus was beautiful. Then the others lowered their voices and provided a counterpoint to the verse Chiona sang, hitting the notes of the lovely melody perfectly and with nuanced expression in her caressing voice. After another chorus, it was Seline who sang a verse in a piercing, pure soprano. There was a final chorus and they all applauded and began to call out what must have been titles in their language because there was quick agreement on one and Trina began a lilting, lively number that each of them added to in turn with much laughter. The song obviously gave them opportunities to tease because mock fighting and gesturing was the consequence of some verses. Almost immediately after they started it, Jak grabbed a waste basket, turned it upside down, and added a drum beat. 

Everyone was absolutely captivated. When they stopped after the second song, Sarah cried out, "More, more," and Jake asked for an explanation of the jokes involved. 

Amid the chatter, Chiona gave Johnny a smug look, leaned toward him and said in a whisper, "You're right. Why waste music on unwashed savages?" She rose gracefully and went into the kitchen, chuckling to herself again, while the rest of the ensemble began another song.

Johnny couldn't stand it. He was a musician before everything and she appeared to be a rare talent. Music was the only thing that could compete with his focus on Jake. He followed her quickly into the kitchen where he found her cutting up an apple. "Okay, I apologize," he said impatiently. "That song you sang. That's a traditional folk tune, right?" while thinking to himself, "No copyright."

This didn't appear to have been a smart question. Chiona said, bitingly, "Simple folk can't come up with new music, right? Of course at some point there had to have been folk who could write music but they must have all died off."

Johnny plowed ahead through the hostility, tenaciously after his answer. "Well, is it or isn't it?"

Chiona sighed and said, "Actually, no. Seline and I wrote it. Our mother was very gifted musician. Seline and I got her musical ability. Jak, Tealk, and Trina got Danil's brilliance. Not that the others are tone deaf or Seline and I are stupid."

Johnny was stunned. This girl was amazing and he wanted to make music with her. "Do you still want to learn the guitar?"

She looked at him thoughtfully and he just knew she was plotting something. "Do you think it would make Jonas interested in me?" she asked, astounding him.

"You want me to teach you guitar to give you a chance to get in my little brother's pants," he asked annoyed by her continued lack of sexual interest in him although he asked himself why he would care. She was attractive but not beautiful and, as the lead guitarist of "We Die Free," he had the attention of top models and Hollywood starlets.

She looked a bit affronted. "He's too young for marriage. I was just thinking a harmless flirtation."

"Who brought up marriage?" he asked, confused.

Now she wasn't playing at being affronted. She was furious. "What kind of woman do you think I am that I would consider becoming physical with a man to whom I wasn't married?" She threw an apple section at him and he thought, "I'm lucky she didn't throw the knife."

Chiona huffed out of the kitchen brushing past Daniel coming in. Daniel walked over to Johnny and said, mildly, apparently having overheard their exchange, "On Lisseth, the taboos against premarital sex and adultery are extremely strong. You not only insult her but you threaten her future by implying that she would even consider going into marriage as anything but a virgin. Think 19th century small town, Johnny."

"They seem to think you're just wonderful. Makes me confident you haven't shared your checkered past with your daughters. And," he said, his tone sharpening, "If you're thinking of a reprise with my mother now that Teal'c is light years away, you're way off base."

Daniel burst out laughing and Johnny was taken aback again. The Jackson's just didn't ever respond the way he expected them to. "There was never any adultery between Sam and me. But in any case, believe this, Johnny; I wouldn't take your mother on a bet. You've got nothing to fear from me." Johnny was surprised to discover that there was a real ring of truth in Daniel's voice that was totally at odds with the expression he had observed in Daniel's eyes when he looked at Johnny's mother. Daniel had an iron will to resist the temptation Sam offered and Johnny was perversely irritated that he would back off from Sam, from HIS mother, as if she was somehow flawed. 

Johnny shrugged and left the kitchen, deciding to find Chiona and apologize. She wasn't in the large living room with his brothers and the rest of Daniel's children. Sara was napping and Chiona was the only other person missing. Her 12 year old brother Jak caught his visual sweep of the room and said, smirking a little, "Chiona's gone outside."

He grabbed the acoustic guitar up in one hand from where he had left it and went out to the porch. Chiona was rocking, her eyes closed, but somehow she knew who had joined her without opening them. "More insults?" she asked.

"Look, Chiona, your customs are different. What I said probably would have been offensive to an American woman but not to the extent it was offensive to you and not for exactly the same reasons. I'm sorry, really. And I would like to teach you the guitar, if you're still interested." 

He waited and she kept rocking. Finally she stopped moving and looked up at him and nodded. "I'd like that. Thank you."

He sat down in a wicker chair next to her and decided he had to know what was going on first. "What happened between the first time we were here and this time that changed the way you react to me?"

Chiona sunk down a little in the chair but all she said was, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Come on, Chiona. Daniel said that there's no contact between girls like you and marriageable men but you were all over me at first. I thought he was lying. Now you won't let me near you, which by the way is going to make it a lot more difficult for me to show you how to hold your hand on the frets. Tell me."

"This is going to be embarrassing," she paused, "for both of us actually. You sure you want to hear it?"

Really intrigued now, he prodded, "Yeah."

"Well, on Lisseth the only men who wear beards ever, I mean ever, are men who choose … not to love women. After you all left the last time, Danil explained to me that it was different here."

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Daniel was sitting on the living room floor with the three youngest and Jack's black lab who just loved the visitors. In Mayborne's doggy brain, they were apparently were part dog since they seem to not be allowed on the furniture either. Tealk was doing math problems using the coffee table as his desk. Jak was sharing it with him, writing up a plan for a physics experiment his father had assigned. Trina was working with Daniel in a mutual study they were doing of geology. There was a wonderful smell of a savory stew in the air and laughter coming from the kitchen where Seline and Jake were making dinner.

When the door swung open and Johnny and Chiona came in laughing, she stopped cold when she took in her father and siblings at their studies. Daniel leveled a displeased look at her and she winced. "You do know what I'm going to ask you, don't you," he said in the language of their people on Lisseth. There was no need to embarrass her in front of Johnny.

"Dei," she answered in kind, "Johnny's been teaching me to play the guitar. That's a kind of study, right?"

"It is that. But is it more important than the things that you weren't studying? More important than practicing your fighting skills?" Daniel hated to be a wet blanket when it seemed that Johnny was finally acting human but the boys took their cue from Chiona, not Trina. There was also the persistent malaise he felt over Teal'c, almost mourning but a kernel of hope keeping him from giving in to full grief. Still it had sapped his patience with his children of late.

Johnny was watching the exchange, puzzled but not happy. You didn't have to speak their language to know that Chiona was getting mildly, but distinctly, chewed out. They'd been working on the music all afternoon and he must be thinking it had something to do with that. Suddenly, Johnny spoke up. "Hey, I don't know what you are all talking about. A little rude perhaps, Daniel?" he said in an aside directly specifically at his ex-stepfather. "You should know, Chiona and I have been working on a song about freedom. And there's more." He raised his voice and called out, "Hey Jake, come out here for a moment, huh?" He turned his attention back to Daniel. "This effort you're all supporting to keep places like Lisseth from being taken over, I think you've been calling it Manifest Destiny, well, Jake and I were talking about building our next "We Die Free" album around it. Not quite a rock opera like 'Tommy,' but maybe getting close."

Jake, coming in from the kitchen trailed by Seline, looked amazed. "What's this we? I believe I brought it up and you didn't have anything good to say about it."

Johnny said, curtly, "You remember it anyway you want to. Point is, that's what we're thinking about doing, right?"

Jake shrugged, "Sure. I really don't like the idea of them all going back to live in an occupied country." Seline gave him a brilliant smile and, if he was going to say anything else, he seemed to have lost the thread. Daniel and Johnny both noticed. Johnny scowled and Daniel felt better than he had all day.

Daniel had stood up and was facing Johnny, his hands on his hips, braced for something more. This was Johnny and he had begun to believe the man was just one hidden agenda inside another. "The thing is," Johnny said, "This could really fall flat. It isn't exactly what our fans expect. We need something to put it over. So, I'm thinking, we use Chiona and Seline to each do a cut and we use the kids for some harmony. And you, Daniel and the kids, with the robes and the whole bit, you guys are in the videos."

Daniel went cold. He had known his family being part of the PR campaign would come up again but this was the first time it had been mentioned to them. He was surrounded by eager faces. No one had any qualms about it. In fact, there seemed to be universal excitement and he was going to have to burst their bubble. "The sooner the better," he thought. "The more they think about it the more disappointed they are going to be." He put a hand up. "I can understand why the idea appeals to you, Johnny, but it's out of the question."

That was when Seline gut kicked him but, out of respect, she did it in their language. "Dei, I honor you but I am of age and a widow and no longer under your authority. I am going to do this because I think it is the right thing to do. Please forgive me."

Daniel felt dozens of arguments flood his mind but he saw the set of her jaw, her expression identical to her mother's when Iona had her mind made up. Arguing with her would be pointless. Chiona spoke next, "Dei, I am old enough to marry. I am an adult on our world. I would also do this."

Chiona's right to make this sort of a decision was definitely in the grey area according to the customs of the Blue of Lisseth. The more conservative would have said not but he had never lined up with their point of view. It would be hypocritical if he did now, just because his daughter was threatened. "So be it. But you three," he said to Trina, Tealk, and Jak, "Will not do this. My reasons are sound and involve protecting you from the public of this world who, at this point, haven't had a chance to eat you alive yet and to protect you from those backing Manifest Destiny. Does anyone want to discuss it with me further?"

The three younger children looked very unhappy but only Trina spoke. "Please think about it, Dei. Perhaps you will find a reason to change your mind."

Johnny and Jake had been watching the exchange, in the Blue tongue, rather like spectators at a tennis match, spectators who had no idea what the rules were. Daniel took pity on them and said in English, "Chiona and Seline can work with you. I will do what you need from me, but the younger three will not take part." 

Seline and Chiona hugged each other and Jake and Johnny grinned. Johnny said, "It's going to be an intense effort to get this out there in time to make a difference so this needs to be a priority, all right, Daniel?"

Daniel had no choice but to agree but he wasn't going to let it go without a few conditions. Seline and Jake, that was perfect, but, although he still loved Johnny, he wanted something better than what he had become for Chiona "I'm there when they leave here. They don't go on the road without me."

"Sure, sure," Johnny said dismissively. Everyone began to move away, talking excitedly. Daniel caught Johnny's arm and hissed in his ear, "Just in case, you might have noticed that Chiona's a pretty girl, keep your hands off her, Johnny. She's a little flirt but she doesn't know your rules and the consequences for her are immense."

When the chopper brought Jack and Sam a short time later and Sam got out carrying the jar, Daniel knew immediately. He had seen Jaffa funeral jars before. Jack had it together, with only small signs that he was hurting, while Sam was a mess. Unlike Jack and Daniel, she hadn't known that Teal'c's trip was a suicide mission, motivated by the fact that he was dying anyway. Teal'c planned to fight until he died and to take chances that were too risky for men who had reasons to try to live. Daniel fervently hoped, for the sake of the friendship that seemed to have reestablished itself between Sam and Jack, that she never found out they had kept that information from her.

He was less concerned for himself since he didn't have a future with her, not even a future friendship. He could hardly stand to be around her because of the memories and the longings that he couldn't suppress. He was determined to keep himself from showing so little self-respect as to live in another man's shadow within his own marriage again. Now that the barrier to that presented by her marriage to Teal'c was gone, he needed to avoid her and get off planet as rapidly as he could before he succumbed to the temptation she offered.

Her sons went to her quickly, all aware that something had happened but, not possessing his knowledge of Jaffa artifacts, less certain what it was. Sam focused on her baby, Jonas, the one who truly loved Teal'c as a father, and said, brokenly, "He died a hero's death Jonas. Rylac told me that he talked about you to him with great pride. Rylac gave me this for you as from one son of Teal'c to another." She took a medallion Teal'c had worn from her pocket and pressed it into Jonas' hand. 

"No, Mom, no, please no," Jonas said and his mother enfolded him in her arms and his brothers put their arms around both of them.

Jack crossed the field to Daniel, said, "Oh shit, Daniel, somehow I hoped" and then he and Daniel embraced hard. When they broke apart, they looked down to see little Tealk looking very serious. "My namegiver is dead, Dei?" Daniel nodded, not trusting himself to words. The little boy began to cry, Daniel picked him up and held him close, while his family gathered around to hold him, Tealk, and Jack. Daniel knew then, in the middle of all his grief, that despite the mutual mess they had made of things, he and Sam, surrounded as they were by the love of their children when they needed support, had still done some things right. 


	2. Chapter 2

The collaboration between Jake and Johnny, Chiona and Seline bore amazing fruit. There were problems of course. "We Die Free's" drummer and the bassist already felt like hired hands due to the monopoly Jake and Johnny had always held over who wrote the music and the greater share of public attention they got. They resented being presented with a fait accompli for the new album. Jake and Johnny were able to smooth things over with the bassist but as they went into the studio, they were still unsure whether the drummer would need to be replaced.

There were rather a large number of problems with equipment. Jake was run off the road on the way to the studio one morning, nearly escaping plowing into a utility pole. When they told Jack, he contacted the people who had asked him to organize part of the PR effort to fight Manifest Destiny. Shortly after that, very hard, serious looking men seemed to appear unobtrusively in their surroundings and the acts of sabotage, if that's what they were, stopped.

Despite the exhilaration of writing really good music, the good, good feeling he got just being around Seline, the way that the baby who was never far from his mother delighted his heart, Jake was in an emotional stew. He wanted everyone he cared about to be happy and felt responsible somehow if they weren't. Sometimes there was no choice as when his mother and Johnny were on the outs and he was forced to take sides. It killed him to do that and he had worried about his mother the entire time. As far as Daniel went, as long as he had put his father outside the pale of people he should care about, he could ignore what he might be doing to make Daniel unhappy. Seline make that a nonoption.

One night, they were sitting quietly together on a balcony, Danny asleep in Seline's arms, the stars brilliant in the sky above them. Seline said, out of the blue, it seemed to Jake, "I expected to detest you."

"Why?" Jake asked, bewildered.

"You tore Danil up so badly. Every time he came back from seeing you, he would be so sad. It would last for days. I would make him little gifts, sing him songs, try to be an extra good little girl but I wasn't you. Then, when you quit seeing him, that was right when my mother died. He cried for you, Jake."

Jake felt very defensive. "Johnny was so hurt. Daniel shouldn't have left us and he shouldn't have been fooling around with my mom while she was still married to Johnny's dad."

Seline stood up abruptly. "Your mother made Danil miserable. He didn't leave her so much as she refused to come. And what evidence do you have, pray tell, that Danil committed adultery with your evil mother?" She spat the last part out.

"It was in papers. It was on the internet." He answered hotly.

"And that makes it true?" she asked and turned heel and left.

She was still not speaking to him two days later and it was affecting the work. Johnny took Jake aside and asked him what was going on. Jake couldn't believe it. "You spent hours telling me that she was trouble. That she only wanted to go back to her planet and would never allow herself to feel anything for me. That she was, I don't know, ignorant and not really half as good looking as any of my previous girlfriends. NOW, you're upset that I'm fighting with her?"

Johnny shrugged. "Okay, I said some things. But Jake, the work is incredible. This album is going to be the best thing I've ever done. Whatever it was, at least get to the point where you can work with her."

Jake had seldom been so angry with his brother. He had spent his life not rocking the boat because he worried about Johnny, about Johnny's inability to connect with anyone but him. He worried that if Johnny didn't have him, Johnny would be alone. He thought the saving grace in all this was that Johnny wanted nothing more than that Jake be happy, even if he was sometimes confused about what it took to make that happen. He was beginning to wonder.

Going out into the hall, he ran, quite literally, into his father and knocked several books out of his arms. "I'm sorry. My head's somewhere else," he apologized as he helped pick up the books. "More books for that biology project you have Seline working on?" Daniel was doing a good job of keeping Seline and Chiona safe from Jake and Johnny through the studies he lined up for them. Almost every minute they weren't working on the music or taking care of Danny, they were studying something. They were so eager to make it up to Daniel for defying him that they couldn't be tempted away from the work. Jake had even started studying with Seline, who, he discovered, had at least the equivalent of an undergraduate degree from a really good school in her head and graduate student knowledge in some disciplines. She was way ahead of him and they had segued into her teaching him. It was, improbably, great fun, at least until he made her mad.

Daniel nodded. He gave Jake a sideways glance and said, "I really need a cup of coffee. Are you guys on a break? Do you want to go get some coffee?"

Both men had their telltale long hair hidden under a cap. Daniel was wearing sunglasses and Jake had his available, perched on his cap. They could probably go out safely without a problem, Jake thought. "Sure. Why not?" he agreed.

They sat at the back of the little coffee shop and Daniel, breathing the steam rolling off his cup, said, "I regret the coffee situation on Lisseth. I had to depend on the SG teams to bring it in and, strangely enough, when they were annoyed with me which was most of the time, I seemed to have trouble getting a steady supply."

Jake suddenly couldn't stand it any more. "Why did you leave my mother?"

Daniel looked more than a little startled. "Where did that question come from?"

"Please just answer it. And don't protect me or my mother. I need to know."

"Okay then." He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts. "There were two reasons. The one I admitted to myself and her at the time was the whole Ascended thing. Johnny told me once you were teased a lot about being an 'Angel's' kid. Can you imagine what it was like for me? I'm not comfortable in the public eye and when that came out, it made it utterly unbearable. I asked your mother to come to Lisseth with me and she wouldn't. I just knew I had to get away and I guess I hoped that after a little bit she'd miss me and she'd want to come. Instead she filed for divorce."

"What was the other reason?"

"Something you need to be very sure of with Seline if you get to the point where you are thinking about marrying her." He held up a hand. "I know, I know, not going to happen. But still, she really loved Mindo, little Danny's father. Make damn sure she isn't pretending you're him."

"Reading between the lines, you're saying my mom was still in love with Jack?"

Daniel pushed his cup away from him, suddenly not interested. "Yeah. She compared me to him all the time. She wouldn't say anything but I could see it in her eyes. It killed her that he married Sara. I told myself that she'd come to love me but it never happened. The real reason she wouldn't go to Lisseth with me was that it was on another planet from Jack."

"Damn," Jake exploded. "You idiot!" People were staring and Jake suddenly got nervous that drawing that sort of attention would lead to their being recognized and the unpleasant swarm of attention that usually meant. Daniel was gaping at him dumbfounded. He lowered his voice to a near whisper. "Do you know ANYTHING about Brad Smith?"

"Huh?" Daniel looked at him askance for the change of subject.

"Do…you…know…anything…about Brad Smith?" Jake repeated, his voice starting to get louder again as he reiterated his question about Sam's third husband. "Just answer the question."

"He's very big star, an A-list actor. I guess Sam met him when she was the technical adviser for that movie on the Stargate."

"Oh…my…God," Jake said. "Did you never see the movie?"

"Noooo. Look Jake this is all incredibly off topic. How about explaining why you got so insulting?"

"The thing is, Brad Smith looks enough like you to be your brother. He played you in that movie. The reason my mother married him was that she was at a really low point, mourning losing you, and he confused her. She could almost pretend she had you back again. Notice she did NOT marry the guy playing Jack."

"No way," Daniel said, shaking his head.

"Oh yeah," Jake said emphatically. "I was just a little kid but I still remember that she cried night after night after you left. I don't know when she came to love you but she sure as hell did by the time it was all over."

Daniel was still as a rock and obviously having an intense interior dialogue. Jake let it go on for awhile before saying, "Join me for a moment here. The reason that Seline is mad at me, the main reason, is that I said something about you and my mother fooling around on Jack. Did you?"

Daniel had his head in his hands now. "You could really believe that, hell forget about me since you haven't had any use for me for years, but about your mother?" He raised his head and looked Jake in the eyes. "No, Jake. I would never have done that to Jack just as I wouldn't have done it to Teal'c."

They sat in silence until their coffee was quite cold. Jake knew that he couldn't be comfortable with Daniel hurting any more. "Maybe you and Mom, you know, when she had time to mourn Teal'c…."

"Forget it Jake. Maybe, given what you said, she cares more about me that I thought but Jack's still the main event."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

They began to work on the videos. Sam came to the studio where they were shooting and joined Daniel off to one side watching. Daniel was in Lisseth robes, his long braids caught at the nape of his neck in a thong and falling down his back. He had been on camera earlier and would be again. Sam had a brief mental image of his hair falling all around her if he were on top of her. She shook herself. Maybe therapy would help. She was a widow who had really cared about her husband and he was only in the grave 4 months now. Granted it hadn't been a passionate relationship, a lot more cuddling went on than sex, but still…

The director was very unhappy with Seline and Daniel was poised to intervene. "You and Jake here are supposed to be star-crossed young lovers. Tell me how we are supposed to convey that if you won't let him touch you?"

"It's just, well my people, we don't even kiss until we're betrothed," her voice sounded incredibly embarrassed. Sam wondered why Jake who was actually extremely sensitive to people's feelings, whatever his good time Charlie image might be, was letting this go on.

Daniel was getting more and more tense. Sam whispered to him, "You have to let her handle things for herself, Daniel. Give her a chance." He glared at her but didn't go into the fray.

Jake spoke then. "How about if we have a private conversation about this?"

He pulled Seline away from the group, and close enough to Daniel and Sam whom he evidently didn't notice, that they could just make out what was being said.

"So if we were engaged, you'd let me kiss you?" Jake asked.

She nodded, looking confused. He pulled a ring off his little finger and said, "Will you marry me, Seline?"

Her mouth was hanging open and she couldn't seem to find anything to say. He picked up her hand and started to put the ring on it before she stopped him. "Wait just a minute. You're asking me to marry you so that you can kiss me in a video?"

"The video only messed up the timing. I have a ring being custom made for you that will be ready on Friday. Saturday I was going to ask you," Jake said, his voice full of nervousness and hope. "Will you?"

He brushed her hair back from her face and slid his fingers into her hair cupping her head. His other hand caressed her cheek. "Jake, where would we live? I don't belong here. There's." He cut off her questions by kissing her.

"Now you have to say yes or you'll be a loose woman," he said softly when they came up for air. "Look, Seline. There will be things to work out but I can't contemplate a life that doesn't have you in it." He kissed her again then. She said, "You have to ask my father. That's how it's done," and pushed him away.

Daniel took that as his cue and came forward, trailed by Sam. "I shouldn't have eavesdropped but I guess I did." He looked at Jake, expectantly.

"Uh, I guess this is the part where I ask your permission to ask Seline to marry me?" Jake said uncertainly.

"Actually, it's my permission for her to marry you, period, but it is regarded as pro forma that I would say yes if that's what she wants," Daniel said, smiling slightly and looked, again, expectant.

"Oh, well, do I have your permission to marry Seline?"

Daniel looked at Seline. "What do you want, honey?" Seline looked at Jake and then blushed fiery red. "Can I take that as you want me to say yes?" She nodded and Daniel laughed, delighted. "You have my permission, Jake." Everyone hugged.

The director suddenly appeared. "How much longer is this conversation going to take?"

"We're done," Jake said. "The lady will be kissing me." They followed the director back to the set. Jake turned and made a thumbs up sign to his parents as he walked away.

"Oh my," Sam sniffed and started rummaging in her purse for a Kleenex. "It's been years since I've cried this much."

Daniel produced a small package of Kleenex out of a pocket. "Allergies," he said to explain his preparedness. "I am sorry, Sam, that you lost Teal'c. You finally had a husband that suited you and… well…I've been through this twice now and it does get better. You go from barely being able to think about anything else to actually forgetting for hours at a time that they are gone to finally being in a place when you can think about the good times and it makes you feel warm, not destroyed."

"You're not at that last, at peace, place though yet," she commented.

"Why do you say that?" he asked curious.

Sam reached out and touched the small smudge in the middle of his forehead. "Oh," he acknowledged. "That stays there until I die or remarry, actually until I am promised to marry. Seline will be wiping hers off, if she hasn't already. It doesn't mean I'm still in mourning. You can keep the Kleenex package if you want. I've got another in my backpack." Daniel wandered off to talk to the drummer who was sitting glumly by himself.

Sam watched him go, imagining his backside going away under the robes, and found herself thinking those thoughts again. Through four honeymoons with four very good looking men she hadn't thought this much about sex. She was beginning to fear for her sanity.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Johnny sat, looking extremely displeased with life in general, watching Seline and Jake. Jake had his arm around her and she was nestled close to him. Mentally he ticked off his grievances: 1) he didn't want Jake with Seline. She was going to mess him up royally, wasn't she? 2) Jake and Seline were spending too much time gawking at each other and it was cutting their productivity, and 3) he wanted to be doing with Chiona what Jake was doing with Seline and didn't see any hope of it.

Chiona glided up next to him, in Lisseth robes, and sat down, turning her back to Johnny. Her hair, usually in a thick braid, was loose. She handed Johnny a brush. "The director wants me to have my hair loose. Seline's, ahum,'busy.' Would you mind brushing it?"

"That's not against the rules?" he asked in a very nasty tone.

She twisted around and looked at him strangely. "What's your problem today, Johnny?"

He rolled his eyes but he began to brush her hair. It was a lustrous inky black and absolutely straight. There were a few tangles and he wasn't as gentle as he should have been working them out. After about the second one, she turned again and cursed him in Blue. It was incomprehensive but yet extremely comprehensible. He tried to behave after that and lost himself in the pure sensual pleasure of her silky hair gliding across his fingers. "Johnny, you're done, right?" she asked at last.

He realized at that point that he needed to take a walk, alone. He got up hastily and beat a path out the door. Unfortunately she was utterly clueless and followed him. He turned on her and hissed, "I absolutely refuse to believe that no one on Lisseth ever breaks a rule, even a little. Either kiss me once or go back inside and leave me alone."

"Why do I waste my time on someone so unpleasant and self-involved?" She moaned.

He pointed to the door. "It makes me crazy. I can't stand it anymore. I've noticed Daniel is avoiding my mother and I can understand why he feels compelled to do it."

"I can't stand you but I can't stand not to be around you. How do you have this effect on me?" He was still pointing at the door. "One that's all. You promise me. That's all." He started to reach for her. "I want a promise."

"I promise," he said thickly. If he only had one kiss, he had to make it the kiss of a lifetime, something she would dream about until it made her as crazy as he was becoming. He drew her against him with one arm around her waist. With his other hand, he traced down her cheek and rubbed a thumb across her lips. She was breathing rapidly and shallowly and he lowered his head so his mouth was only a whisper away from hers but still he didn't begin the actual kiss. He brushed his mouth against hers, encouraging her lips to part. Then finally, he ended her agony, and gave her the first kiss of her life. Chiona didn't learn about kissing from some poor awkward boy who was himself clueless and embarrassed. She learned from a poor besotted man who was suddenly more nervous than before a crowd of thousands. He may have possessed his share of knowledge on the subject gleaned from any number of eager and beautiful women who wanted to kiss the rock star but, in some ways, it was like his first kiss too.

When the kiss at last ended, she gave a little push to put space between them. She was obviously shaky and deeply affected. "No wonder they don't allow us to do that. It's dangerous," she said, attempting to get control of the situation.

Johnny wasn't letting her off so easily. He skimmed a hand up her body, never touching but only a paper thin distance away. His face was inches from hers and he spoke softly, his warm breath heating her face. "I want you and you want me. You'll have to decide if you want to keep living by your rules because I won't." Abruptly he backed off from her and left. Chiona leaned against the wall and hated herself for thinking jealously about Sam and Seline. It seemed so unfair that Johnny's mother had found four men to love her, her sister had found two, and she could only find one man who was too busy loving himself. 


	3. Chapter 3

When the video were finished, they all ended up back in Minnesota. This freed Jack and Daniel to make appearances since Sam was in Minnesota as the chaperone and the girls were taking care of Sara. The day they had spent in Chicago had been unpleasant but it was over. They were safely in their suite at the Wyndham at the airport and had liberated a couple of beers from the minibar. They sat limply, completely drained, on either end of the sofa.

"What's it like having all that hair?" Jack asked.

"Pardon," Daniel responded, bemused by Jack's choice of subject.

"It looks like it would be heavy, you know, pull on your scalp and make your head feel restricted," Jack speculated. "Lord, it must take you hours for it to dry when you wash it. And what an ordeal if you ever got lice. Not to mention the risk of it getting in something." Daniel was looking at him with his mouth open and his forehead wrinkled. "You know, since you came back from Lisseth, it's the first time in my life I've ever really lived with people with truly long hair. None in the military and Sara and Sam always kept their hair short. Hell even my dog has short hair."

"Why are we talking about this Jack?" Daniel asked absolutely bewildered by now. Jack, the man of few words, going on about nothing. Daniel felt like he was living a Seinfield episode from decades before.

"You've got a lot more hair than Sam," Jack continued as if Daniel hadn't said a word. "She got about as much hair on her head now as you had when I first met you although it's pouffed up more. I guess I'm just way too old because it seems to me like a really strange mental image to imagine a man and a woman together where he has all this hair and she hasn't got much more hair than some guys."

"You are creeping me out, Jack," Daniel said. "Why in heaven's name would you be imagining Sam and I together? That's almost like imaging, I don't know, your parents or something. At this point, we're family."

Jack looked at Daniel then, finally acknowledging that he was saying something. "Are you telling me that when Sam and I were married you never had images come to your mind, whether you wanted them or not?"

"Good grief, no," Daniel said disgusted.

"But then, you hadn't been married to her yet and you are so damn honorable. She was my wife, after all."

"So you, you've pictured.." Words failed Daniel and he trailed off.

"I take the fifth," Jack said.

"You filthy old man," Daniel said, half laughing, half appalled.

"If I ever did, I'm not saying it was anything I wanted to do or that I didn't absolutely refuse to entertain the thought," Jack defended himself.

"I return to my earlier question. Why are we talking about this?" Daniel said, struggling to get closure to this whole disturbing discussion.

"It's the way Sam's been looking at you. It's putting ideas in my head about the two of you. I was married to her, Daniel. I know what that expression on her face means. If I catch her, damn, Daniel, the woman blushes." Jack shrugged. "Maybe you ought to do something about it."

"And maybe you should go to confession or something to deal with your unclean thoughts and leave me be." He stood up and started for his room.

"You can't tell me you're not still in love with her," Jack said, raising his voice slightly.

Daniel turned around. "We had this conversation, the night before Teal'c left. She never stopped loving you. I love you too Jack but I don't want to sleep with you which is what being married to her was like." He rubbed at his face. "Look, this whole Manifest Destiny issue is going to come to a head in the next three months, one way or the other, and then I'm going back to Lisseth. There are a couple of attractive widows in my camp. I thought I'd spend some time with them, see if there's a spark. It happened with Iona. It could happen again. Good night, Jack."

He opened the door and then turned back a second time. "And, uh, Jack. I've caught her looking at you a time or two. Maybe we should agree not to make anything of it."

The door closed behind Daniel. Jack got up and threw his empty beer bottle in the wastebasket so viciously that it shattered. "Oh, Sam. I'm doing my best but the scar tissue on that boy just may be too thick," he muttered and slumped back down on the sofa. 

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Sam had begun to feel that she was on some sort of funeral barge and it wasn't for her departed husband. She was the one who was newly widowed but she seemed to be spending a good deal of her time trying to lift other people out of depression. Jake and Jonas had gone off for the delayed filming of "Troubles." Thank God, their roles were small and they would only be gone for a month since Seline spent her time moping and getting up in the middle of the night for phone calls from Europe from Jake. This made her even more tired and droopy. The baby, picking up on his mother's malaise and in the midst of aggressive teething, seemed to cry all the time. Trina was very upset that her father hadn't relented about allowing her to participate in the album and its video and flounced around, taking out a certain amount of her disgruntlement on her brothers. The worst offenders were Johnny and Chiona. They were particularly annoying because Sam couldn't discover the reason they were unhappy although it clearly had to do with their relationship with each other. When she asked Johnny about it, he literally snarled, "Why would I know anything about why some naïve little girl has got a cob up her ass?"

She tried to approach Chiona more than once but consistently met with a cold stare and an answer couched in polite words but dripping venom. Seline either didn't want to talk with her sister or refused to share what she had found out with Sam and wasn't any help. 

Sam was trying to focus on a professional journal on her laptop but had been sitting on the same page for so long that the screensaver had come on while she was still on the first paragraph. "I'm going for a run," she announced to the boys and Trina who were sitting around the coffee table, studying.

Tealk got up and came over and hugged her. Tealk had made it clear that he thought he had inherited some sort of responsibility for her wellbeing when his namegiver, her husband, had died. He looked up at her and said, sunily, "Have a good time and be careful not to fall over anything."

Sam couldn't help but melt every time she looked at his sweet face, particularly if his dark hair, his one distinguishing feature from the blond little Jake of years ago, was pulled back so it was less obvious. He'd be her son, if she and Daniel… "Do not go there, Samantha," she chided herself, and gave Tealk a bright smile and a return hug. 

She went upstairs to change her jeans for running shorts and was about to come out of the room she was sharing with Trina she heard light female voices and footsteps approaching. Sam felt like a jerk but she decided to stay where she was and take a chance that she might overhear something helpful. It was, indeed, Chiona and Seline. They went into the room they shared directly across the hall but the door didn't close all the way and Sam could just make out the conversation. Seline said with the lack of animation of someone who has already said the same thing many times and been completely unheeded, "If you just would talk to him, explain how you feel."

"That would require Johnny to have some capacity to understand or care about anyone but himself," Chiona responded bitterly.

"He cares about Jake," Seline said but she sounded quite uncertain of that statement herself.

"He just uses Jake as a projection of himself."

"If he's so awful, why are you so torn up?" her sister asked, beginning to sound exasperated.

"Oh Seline," Chiona said, starting to cry, "I don't want to but we don't get to pick who we love. Even if they don't love us back."

"He wants you, that's clear," Seline said.

"He wants me to give up everything I am and he doesn't even love me," Chiona stated in a muffled voice, between sobs. Perhaps Seline was holding her now. "If he just said he loved me, I think I might do what he wants. Behave like a Tauri woman. But he's never said that. He just keeps demanding…" and the rest was lost in big gusts of sobbing.

Sam was ashamed of Johnny and ashamed of herself for intruding on this tawdry confession. She thought she heard the door shut more firmly and the voices get indistinct and peeked out to see if she could leave her room unnoticed. That was when she saw Johnny, frozen in place in front of the next bedroom door. He was deep in thought and Sam knew, she just knew, he had heard at least some of it. Chiona had given him the weapon to make her do something she didn't really want to do. Never mind that there was nothing particularly wrong with it from Sam's point of view. Chiona believed to her core that there was and it would affect her commensurately.

Sam backed away from the door and leaned against the wall, feeling helpless. She knew from experience that Johnny wouldn't listen to her. Maybe it was time to involve Jack. It was time for him to step up to the plate as Johnny's father whether Johnny wanted him to or not. The last person to involve was Chiona's father who probably would want to take Johnny out and demonstrate that archeologists could be pretty scary people too.

When Sam came back downstairs, Jak was on the phone. "Mr. O'Neill isn't here. Do you want to talk to Ms. Carter?" He looked up relieved to see her and handed the phone over immediately without waiting to hear whether the person on the other end wanted to talk to her or not.

"Ms. Carter, this is Ms. Blankenship. I'm a nurse in Dr. Janeway's office. May I ask when Mr. O'Neill will be returning."

Sam was uneasy immediately. She knew that Dr. Janeway was Sara O'Neill physician. "Mr. O'Neill is out of the state. He's asked me to take responsibility for Sara's care in his absence."

"I guess that's all right then," the nurse said, clearly uncomfortable with talking to someone she wasn't sure was authorized to handle the situation. "When Ms. O'Neill was here last week with Mr. O'Neill, we did some tests. Initially there didn't seem to be a cause for concern but the doctor has looked at them further and thinks it's important that he do some follow up blood work immediately. Could you bring Ms. O'Neill in today?"

"Of course, if that's really necessary. It's almost a two hour drive though. We won't be able to get there before about 5:00. Is that going to be all right," Sam asked, already thinking through the logistics.

"That will fine. We'll look for you then, Ms. Carter," the woman said, crisply and hung up.

Sam didn't want to try to drive and cope with Sara at the same time if she got into one of her vague states. Rather than take Chiona or Seline and leave the other one to cope with the baby and the three younger children, it seemed best to take Trina or Johnny. It suddenly seemed like a possible lucky opportunity to talk to Johnny if Sara slept as she probably would in the car. That is provided Johnny would be willing to stuff his hair under a hat and try to look inconspicuous. Sam had found that if she just wore really shapeless, frumpy looking clothes, no make up, and glasses with a hat jammed on her head, no one ever recognized her.

They walked across the footbridge off the little island and got the car out of the locked garage on the shore. Sam decided to ask Johnny to drive so she could deal with Sara. She was a little nervous about making the drive in the time she had given the nurse since she had definitely been shooting from the hip in estimating the time without any prior experience or real confidence as to where the doctor's office was. Despite her concern, she cautioned Johnny when he exceed the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour. Shortly after they made it to the highway, they came up on a slow moving truck with traffic passing it in the fast lane. The rear end of the truck was getting closer and closer and Johnny wasn't slowing down at all. "Johnny, what are you doing?" she demanded, gripping the door handle.

"Mom, the brakes, they aren't doing anything," he said anguished. He switched to the fast lane and hit the horn to try to get the car ahead of them to move on around the truck but the driver just gave them the universal salute and continued to inch forward with respect to the truck. There was oncoming traffic and a guardrail on the right. They didn't have good options. "Oh my God," Sam said uselessly. If she had to be in an accident, it just couldn't be with her precious firstborn or Jack's beloved wife.

He was coming up on the truck at 65 miles per hour in a much smaller vehicle. Sara started to scream. No question who the loser of this contest was going to be. Abruptly she could see that the guardrail was ending as they finished crossing a small river. Johnny jerked the car to the right, off the highway, but slightly miscalculated in his timing. The end of the guardrail caught the back of the car and everything went out of control.

Once the highway patrol got Sam and Johnny out of the car, it was obvious that they were mostly shaken up and bruised by the air bags but Sara, befuddled and panicked, had taken her seatbelt off. Her neck was bent at an unnatural angle although she was still breathing. There was only one ambulance and the medics asked one of the state troopers to bring them to the hospital in his car. They suggested that both be more thoroughly checked out at the hospital but their current concern was obviously Sara.

Sam seemed to take forever to put it together and realize that she needed to call Jack. She took out her cell, dropping it twice. Johnny was chalky white. He kept repeating like a mantra, "She's got to be all right." Sam said, "We need to call Jack. He has to get here."

Johnny came out of his fugue enough to say, "It would probably be better to call Daniel, Mom. They're together. Let him handle this in person? Ok, Mom? And Mom, don't tell him I was driving. Not yet. Please."

Sam nodded and leaned back in the cracked leather seat of the patrol car to make the call. The ambulance had already taken off and they were waiting for the trooper to finish up whatever accident scene detail he was futzing with along with some other trooper and get them to the hospital. She called Daniel and he promised to get Jack there as fast as possible but that was still going to be hours and hours.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Jack had led men and women in all sorts of life threatening situations. He had seen personnel under his command be hit and die and gone on because he had to. Daniel had himself witnessed Jack's coolness under fire on more than one occasion and so was cut to the core to see that Jack was falling apart. Jack gratefully let Daniel make all the arrangements and shepherd him from Chicago to Minneapolis to the smaller town where the hospital was. Jack hardly said a word the entire time, his face an expressionless mask, but Daniel watched what his hands were doing, how they were gripping each other or the arms of his seat or crumpling a coffee cup.

Everything thwarted their need to get back quickly. There were flight problems and car problems. Daniel got pulled over for speeding and when the trooper recognized the celebrity driver, he seemed to take great satisfaction in demonstrating that fame had no effect on his ability to fairly and impartially enforce the law, thank you very much. Jack misplaced his cell phone somewhere along the way in his zombie like state and Daniel's went dead, something that never happened with the modern breed of cell phones but happened to him this time.

They charged into the emergency room with no idea of what Sara's status was, having been out of touch for over an hour. Johnny and Sam turned tear stained faces toward them as they entered. Johnny looked at his father with more genuine pain on his face than Daniel had seemed the self-possessed young man display since they had reestablished contact. Sam was in the midst of blowing her nose and appeared completely devastated.

Jack came to a complete halt. "How is Sara," he asked him a monotone, his hands clenched in fists at his sides.

Johnny and Sam gave each other what to Daniel was a telltale exchange of looks. Then it was Johnny who got up and came to Jack, not Sam, as Daniel would have expected. He grasped his father by the shoulders and said, "Dad, she didn't make it."

Jack looked at his son stonily. "You're wrong. You have to be wrong"  
Johnny shook his head, sadly, and a tear started to trace its way down his cheek. Sam came forward then and said, softly, "It was about 45 minutes ago."

"Oh Dad, I'm so, so sorry," Johnny said brokenly and astounded Daniel by pulling his father into a one way hug. Jack didn't react but it seemed less to Daniel like a rejection of his son, than a rejection of all of reality.

Johnny let go of him then, stepped back, and said again, "I'm sorry. I wish it had been me," and then suddenly he turned on his heel and ran out down the corridor to the outside.

"I have to see her," Jack, the robot, said again.

Sam was obviously torn between helping Jack and going after Johnny but, in the end, led Jack to the room where her body still lay, unmoving like a broken doll on the white hospital bedding. Daniel shook his head at her when she started to go forward and pulled her back out of the room. It was 15 minutes or so before Jack emerged. He didn't speak to Sam and Daniel. He walked slowly, taking very deliberate steps, back toward the emergency room exit. Sam and Daniel flanked him. After a moment, Daniel put his arm around him. When he didn't shake it off, Sam did the same. Suddenly, his legs just buckled and he started to fall and grabbed on to them. They kept him upright and got him into an empty room. The three of them sat on the bare mattress. Daniel and Sam held on to Jack with both their arms from either side. Jack had an arm around Daniel and the other held Sam's head against his chest as he rested his cheek on the top of her head.

"We're here, as long as you need us, Jack. We love you," Daniel said his voice breaking. Sam whispered, "Yes." Jack said, "I know." 


End file.
